


Houseguest

by Dendritic_Trees



Series: Hurt/Comfort Garbage Pile [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Cuddling, Food, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 04:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6596830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dendritic_Trees/pseuds/Dendritic_Trees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Betty thinks its sort of depressingly typical that of all the places for the fugitive Winter Soldier to show up, its right outside her house.  But she's still not going to let General Ross have him.  Also he looks cold.  How bad can he be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Houseguest

Betty had been having a perfectly ordinary evening; eating pizza and splitting her attention between the news and an issue of _Science_ when there was a crash from behind her house that was much too loud to have been made by a racoon.

She stuck her head out of the door to investigate and saw a man sitting in her alley.   That was unusual enough, the area around Culver University where she lived was pretty thoroughly suburban, there weren’t generally many homeless people around.

“Excuse me,” she called, “are you alright?”

The man startled and drew his arm up to cover his face. His metal arm. Betty spared a moment to glare up at the cloudy sky because, of course this was happening to her. Then she put her shoes on and went outside to make sure the Winter Soldier wasn’t bleeding to death behind her house.

He withdrew as she walked closer, drawing his knees up in front of his chest and wrapping his arms around them.

Betty crouched down a couple of arms lengths away, trying to look non-threatening. She wasn’t sure how much more non-threatening she could really get. She was a skinny college professor wearing sweatpants and a fluffy sweater. He was a super-soldier. But maybe this was one of those times when the thought counted.

“Go away,” the soldier mumbled, “please. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

It didn’t sound like a threat, there was real concern in his voice and if that was his first thought, how evil could he be? And how did she square that with the news footage from DC, except by getting more data?

“I don’t think you’re going to hurt me,” said Betty, “you haven’t so far. How about I come over and see if you’re okay?”

She tip-toed closer to him. He didn’t move, just looked at her like she was something with teeth.

“There, see,” she said, when she was right next to him, “no one’s hurt. You’re safe. How did you even get here?”

“There were… soldiers… I didn’t want to hurt anyone else… I just ran… I got tired…” the soldier trailed off.

“I know,” said Betty, because she knew exactly whose soldiers had been in DC. “Well, if you want to hide from the army, you’ve come to the right place. How about you come inside and have some pizza?”

The soldier didn’t look very enthusiastic, but he let himself be tugged to his feet and led inside.

 

Betty put three slices of pizza on a plate, added a fourth, then gave it to the Soldier along with a glass of water, and put the kettle on. He stuffed the pizza into his mouth like he was starving. So Betty gave him another piece.

“Do you have a name?” Betty asked him.

He looked up at her, with his pupils all huge, and gulped the last of his food. “No – yes – I think – James?” he said, even though it was more like a question he was hoping she’d know the answer to. “They took it, and I – I don’t remember.”

Presumably ‘they’ were HYDRA. So that was how he went from terrifying mass-murderer to wet and basically harmless over the course of a few weeks.

“Hi James, I’m Betty.” Betty said, “nice to meet you.”

They sat quietly until the kettle clicked off. James eyes were darting every which way, and Betty had never been so glad that she owned a kettle that didn’t whistle.

“Thank you,” James said very quietly, when Betty handed him a mug full of tea. Chamomile. He looked tense.

She honestly wasn’t entirely sure what to do with him. He wasn’t giving much indication of what he wanted, or what he thought about her dragging him inside. He just kept tracking her with his eyes, like he was waiting for something to happen, and not something nice.

“You’re welcome,” Betty said, “I’m going to see if I can find you some clean clothes, okay?”

Betty managed to locate a pair of men’s pyjama pants, and an even older shirt, which she thought might have originally been Leonard’s, once upon a time. Then she went and pulled the sofa bed out in the spare room and put sheets on it.

“Do you want to take a shower?” Betty asked, handing James the small pile of clothes and a clean towel.

“Please,” James said, and stood up.

 

James spent 45 minutes in the bathroom with the shower running. Betty figured he deserved it. James eventually wandered back out of the bathroom in his borrowed pyjamas with a towel still draped over his shoulders. He stopped a little outside the bathroom door, looking a bit lost. He looked very young, and totally exhausted. Like one of her grad students who’d been up a few too many nights running overnight timepoints. Not one of her senior students either.

“I set up the guest bedroom,” Betty told him, “you’re welcome to it, if you want.”

James looked delighted at the prospect of sleep. He face opened up, and his mouth turned up at the corners, and Betty showed him down the hall, and left him curled up very small in the middle of the bed.

The things you would have to do for Betty to be okay with letting Thaddeus Ross have you were, admittedly, deeply heinous, but she was feeling better about her decision in this particular case with every interaction. She knew James actually did have the capacity to be very dangerous, but he didn’t seem dangerous. He just seemed confused. The first thing he’d said to her was that he didn’t want to hurt anyone. He couldn’t be that bad.

 

She had just meant to finish up her journal and head to bed, but the middle slat on the sofa bed creaked, and it just kept on creaking. So she sat up, waiting for her new houseguest to settle in. But instead there were shuffling footsteps and James appeared in the hall with the comforter from the bed wrapped around his shoulders. Which was more adorable than it probably should have been.

“I kept you up,” he said, in a soft voice, “I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” said Betty, “I’m just reading. You can come and sit with me if you want.”

James came over and perched on the very edge of the couch in the corner furthest away from Betty. Betty kept up the pretence of reading for a few minutes, while James edged slowly towards her. It gave her the impression he wasn’t giving her space entirely for his own benefit.

“I have this friend,” she started, after a couple more minutes. “His name’s Bruce. He’s had some experience escaping the army. I won’t call him unless you’d like me to, but he might be able to help you out. If you’d like that.”

James didn’t say yes or no, but he moved a few more centimeters towards her, which she took as encouragement.

“You can stay here, its no trouble. If you want to talk to Bruce, I’ll ask him to come over.”

That got her another few centimetres.

“I’m not scared of you,” Betty continued, conversationally, “and I don’t think you’re going to hurt me. You aren’t even keeping me up late. Why don’t you just try to get comfortable?”

James had got so close now, less than a foot away. She reached out very slowly, so he could pull away if he needed to, and rubbed his shoulder through the comforter. He tilted into it a bit.

“Are you warm enough?” she asked him.

He nodded and slumped forward a little more, putting a little more pressure on her hand.

Betty just let him settle in, and kept rubbing circles into his shoulder, because he seemed to like it, until he somewhat abruptly tipped into her lap, fast asleep, without ever saying anything else.

“Alright,” she said to him, “we can sort it all out in the morning.”


End file.
